Death penalty foes rally near hearings

October 26, 2002|By H. Gregory Meyer, Tribune staff reporter.

When the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty was planning its national conference a year ago, it was no coincidence it picked Chicago for its meeting place. Illinois was under a death penalty moratorium and the governor's Commission on Capital Punishment was six months away from issuing 85 recommendations for reform.

But no one foresaw that the four days of workshops and plenary sessions would transpire amid two weeks of clemency hearings.

"When we chose Chicago, we had no idea we would be rallying in front of this building," David Elliot, the group's communications director, said as he stood at the James R. Thompson Center on Friday afternoon.

The building has been the site of 67 of the 142 clemency hearings that are scheduled to end Monday.

Although the hearings have remained largely a statewide drama, the roughly 400 conference participants reflected on what the Illinois experience means to death penalty opponents nationally.

Some saw the hearings as a model for other states to follow. Others said Illinois is proof of capital punishment's inherent flaws. More worried that Gov. George Ryan, seen as a hero by many in the anti-death penalty community, would balk as a string of wrenching hearings graphically resuscitated victims' families' pain.

After the clemency hearings, in which most relatives of murder victims staunchly opposed commuted sentences, the rally in front of the Thompson Center featured a different voice.

"We feel that the state of Illinois killing people in an attempt to make us feel better is an absolute obscenity," said Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, whose sister and brother-in law were shot to death in their Winnetka townhouse in 1990.